


Blood Unto Talent

by Buriko



Category: Akatsuki no Yona | Yona of the Dawn
Genre: Gen, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-19
Updated: 2018-12-19
Packaged: 2019-09-23 00:48:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17070332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Buriko/pseuds/Buriko
Summary: Recognizing Yoon’s talents and loyalty to Yona, the Dragons offer him their blood. Yoon wrestles with the offer and tries to strike a deal.





	Blood Unto Talent

Though this place could not exist, Yoon was certain he had good reason to be there. There was no ground beneath his feet and it was neither hot nor cold, and ribbons of color swirled like ambient light. They were all around him. He could not see their faces but could feel their stares on him.

Yoon liked attention, so the heavenly dragons’ stares didn’t bother him. “What do you with want me?” he addressed them. “I’m a human.”

“ _A human_ ,” voices echoed back in his head, “ _who has displayed loyalty to our Hiryuu_.”

“If by that you mean Yona, then yes,” he replied. “I do everything for her but fight. I mend her clothes, cook her food, tend her wounds—”

“ _You have fought. We have seen_.”

Yoon would have felt flushed, had he been able to feel any heat in that space. “I’ve taken a few hits, that’s all.”

“ _You serve Hiryuu, but you are frail_.”

His eye flinched. “What are you getting at?”

“ _To greater serve our Hiryuu, we offer you our blood_.”

“Me? You’d make me like the Four Dragons?” he gawked. “Didn’t you finish doing that a couple thousand years ago?”

The voices boomed in succession. “ _Hiryuu needs no weakling._ ”   
“ _Take it!_ ”   
“ _We grant our favor upon those whom Hiryuu loves._ ”  
“ _You have long since had the favor of one who hears our voice, his judgement is pure._ ”

“One who… hey! Did Ik-soo put you up to this? No, he wouldn’t have. Ik-soo wanted me to see the world and learn all I can, and he’d never make me fight. Sorry,” he shook his head. “Dragon claws and limbs wouldn’t suit me.”

“ _Your understanding of a dragon’s power is limited_!” they bellowed with a voice that rumbled through Yoon’s being, shaking him from his spine. “ _Your priest wouldn’t dare to cast such a request upon the gods, and we gods would not take it. We accept no interference in a contract between gods and mortals. It is in our wisdom that we have found a frail human as yourself worthy. Your lack of respect reveals your lack of intellect, which we have come to remedy._ ”

“Excuse me? Lack of—” he stopped himself.

When Yoon began his travels with Yona, he believed he was a genius. With impoverished villagers and Ik-soo to compare his talents to, it was hard not think so. In that small world, his mind was broad.   
  
In obeying Ik-soo's order to see more, he was humbled. The world he knew grew larger, and his mind felt smaller and smaller, crushed under the weight of his ignorance. At some point in his travels, he stopped calling himself a genius. He didn’t have the right.

Even in his deepest of moods, he knew the value in providing food and mending wounds and he considered himself useful; but usefulness had no power to stop violence and all the threats that constantly befell his family. What right had he to have a place along these warriors?

“ _Take it_ ,” the dragons echoed in his head. “ _Receive our blood_.”

Yoon was never one to take the easy way out of things, but he did appreciate efficiency. With a few drops of the gift in front of him, he would attain fantastic powers unknown even to history’s greatest talents. He too could become a rare beast; one of the dragon brothers in its full meaning.

A different sound rattled through his mind. It was a pan of water, the one he dropped one day in a Kai village.

That was the first day that he felt a gripping connection to the dragons, when they welcomed him into the room and spoke in hushed voices, sharing with him the secret of the dragon heritage. With that knowledge, Yoon felt he had been absorbed into a circle unknown to anyone but those four, who kept that circle locked with their bonds and silent acceptance. It was the day they felt like his own flesh and blood, but impossibly out of reach.

Yoon took a deep breath; though his lungs were full there was no trace of air pacing through his nostrils. The swirling light indicated no passage of time. He could not see their faces, but he felt their anticipation grow heavier.

“You drive a hard deal,” he said. “You realize, it’s pretty late to do this now. I already see what fate lies in store for humans with dragon blood.”

“ _Speak what you mean, human_.”

“Suppose I accept all that. What do I get in return for it? You want me to have these powers so that I can serve Yona, and I probably benefit from them too, so that’s fair. But to give up my life, and those of all my successors? That’s a stiff price.”

“ _State your claim_!”

“Release the other dragons from the cycle,” he glared into the light, looking where he felt their eyes. “Let them be free of their powers, and I’ll accept.”

“ _Insolent human_!” they roared, and Yoon felt he may burst as the colors swarmed around him, tighter and tighter. “ _The gods accept no interference on a contract!_ ”

The pressured squeezed him from inside and out. Yoon reeled and choked out a scream.

 

 

* * *

 

“Yoon-kun! Wake up!”

He did. The ground was hard and flat beneath his back, and the high sunshine lit up the tent. Jaeha and Zeno were crouched over his face; at his feet Shin-ah stared, and Kija took a big gulp of air and put his hand to his chest in relief. “Phew.”

Yoon searched their faces and stayed calm, though his heart was still racing. “What’s going on?”

“Lad must have had a nightmare, right?”

“Or by this hour, a daymare,” said Jaeha. “We thought we’d let you sleep in, but once it got this late you had us worried.”

“And you made it worse by screaming like that,” added Kija. “Are you in any pain?”

“No.” He curled up on his side. A twinge of tears threatened to make a liar of him.

“Lad?”

Everyone was quiet. They all must had felt the traces left behind.

“Sorry,” Yoon said, hiding his face in the nest of his arms. “I couldn’t do anything.”


End file.
